Colleges in Dire Financial Straits

[polly_mer]

All great questions.

It will be interesting to see how this falls out, especially when online/remote education is no longer the terrible choice that legitimate institutions should avoid.

It makes me wonder how many programs that can be done well online will just be cut from in-person.

I wonder how many decisions will be something like paying a deal with one of the big online providers (ASU, SNHU) to provide gen ed courses that don't have to be all that good.

It makes me wonder how fast some of those gen ed requirements will be eliminated or modified when there's no money in it for the institutions.

[Hibush]

It makes me wonder how fast some of those gen ed requirements will be eliminated or modified when there's no money in it for the institutions.

That thought will bring us around to the "completely restructured" thread. Will we see new two-year schools offering only upper-division courses for those to took care of the prerequisites elsewhere?

[polly_mer]

It makes me wonder how fast some of those gen ed requirements will be eliminated or modified when there's no money in it for the institutions.

That thought will bring us around to the "completely restructured" thread. Will we see new two-year schools offering only upper-division courses for those to took care of the prerequisites elsewhere?

We don't need new schools; the good 4-year institutions already are accepting the students with dual credit, dual enrollment, and AP credit to start as sophomores or more.

The elite institutions often don't accept those alternatives, but the reports from elites are they don't have checkbox gen eds staffed by the armies of adjuncts, either.

[Ruralguy]

We try to give folks just about as much dual enrollment and AP credit as we can. I've had several advisees entering as first year students , but who could have likely strategically graduated in 2 years. None did so, though some graduated in three or three and a half.

[onthefringe]

Where I am the vast majority of traditional aged students who enroll out of high school (which represents about 70% of our student body) have at least a semester worth of credits under their belt when they walk on campus, and fully 30% have a year or more. Generally speaking those credits will fulfill actual graduation requirements (general education and/or major prereqs). A vanishingly small number of those students graduate in less than 4 years. They mostly use the credits to allow them to either double major or to take multiple "light" semesters while they are here. The way our tuition is structured this does not save them any money. So we, at least, are mostly seeing students who want the full, four year "college experience".

[dismalist]

Where I am the vast majority of traditional aged students who enroll out of high school (which represents about 70% of our student body) have at least a semester worth of credits under their belt when they walk on campus, and fully 30% have a year or more. Generally speaking those credits will fulfill actual graduation requirements (general education and/or major prereqs). A vanishingly small number of those students graduate in less than 4 years. They mostly use the credits to allow them to either double major or to take multiple "light" semesters while they are here. The way our tuition is structured this does not save them any money. So we, at least, are mostly seeing students who want the full, four year "college experience".

Dear, dear onthefringe,

It's hard to make this plausible, but there's too much money around.

[polly_mer]

Where I am the vast majority of traditional aged students who enroll out of high school (which represents about 70% of our student body) have at least a semester worth of credits under their belt when they walk on campus, and fully 30% have a year or more. Generally speaking those credits will fulfill actual graduation requirements (general education and/or major prereqs). A vanishingly small number of those students graduate in less than 4 years. They mostly use the credits to allow them to either double major or to take multiple "light" semesters while they are here. The way our tuition is structured this does not save them any money. So we, at least, are mostly seeing students who want the full, four year "college experience".

Yep.  I bet your institution also is selective enough to build an incoming class from the qualified applicants instead of sighing heavily in June, lowering the bar again, and sending letters that explain how to appeal the admissions decision from April in a desperate attempt to have enough warm bodies in the fall to only lose a little money on the projected budget.

Watching how two young relatives who went to an elite HS have been navigating college has been pretty interesting.  One did use her credits to have a couple light semesters so she could have essentially multiple full-time internships on the other side of the country from her institution and take only a couple online courses to progress.  The other had one light semester for an internship and did graduate a term early to take an excellent job that was offered to him because of that internship.

In contrast, Super Dinky was in bad shape in the past ten years in part because they weren't transfer friendly (e.g., the gen ed requirements could not be fully met through transfer credits and thus even people with associate's degrees were still taking more gen eds even into last term of senior year).  Students who did their research seldom came to Super Dinky, except in niche majors where SD had a substantial fraction of the seats in the state.

Yet SD admitted increasing numbers of first-year students who either needed serious remediation (taught out of the tutoring center by staff with faculty status as part of their normal duties) or were skipping most of the expected first-year curriculum taught by full-time faculty due to their AP/dual credit.  One really memorable fall had almost no freshman comp sections because two-thirds of the entering class needed remediation (not taught by the regular English faculty) and most of the other third had already met that requirement before arriving.

People who needed serious remediation often left before getting to the gen ed courses offered at SD or those students stepped up and followed the advice to take summer courses elsewhere to stay on track to graduate in four years or less, which was another loss of revenue.  Either way, SD was losing revenue because gen ed was no longer a sure enrollment.

At one desperate point, SD did become more transfer friendly going so far as to accept up to 90 credits towards degree and changing the gen ed program.  Having several extra seniors living off campus didn't do nearly as much for the revenue as hoped to offset the new frosh who were finishing early by skipping gen ed or the additional cost in having new frosh who were taking developmental courses and then skipping gen ed through outside credit.

The primary bright spot was the athletes who wanted to be on campus for as long as they could maintain eligibility and many of them did manage four years of college experience.

[polly_mer]

We haven't discussed Marquette University yet:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/11/04/marquette-faces-student-and-faculty-pushback-planned-cuts

Administration officials have said that while the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated financial challenges, much of the $45 million shortfall it has predicted by 2022 can be traced to demographic changes and lower birth rates in its traditional cohort. This year the university is 424 students short of where it needs to be for its budget, meaning that it has only about 1,650 students in its freshman class. The university is predicting that next year's enrollment will be down another 250 students. Total enrollment is now about 11,550. Total operating expenditure in fiscal year 2019 was $442.39 million.

<snip>

"The university's temporary mitigating actions, including merit suspension, 403(b) suspension, leadership pay decreases and discretionary spend reductions are simply not sustainable," a university spokesperson said via email. "To truly address the challenges ahead and position Marquette for a strong future, the university must thoughtfully and strategically identify more permanent solutions, such as headcount reductions among staff and faculty."

How deep those reductions will go and whom they will target is still being decided, but officials have said it may be in the ballpark of 225 to 300 faculty and staff layoffs. In April, the university reported it had just under 3,000 employees. Faculty said they've been told the College of Arts and Sciences could be cut by 25 percent.

In Sept. 2019 (i.e., prior to COVID), Marquette University was shedding positions ( https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/education/2019/09/05/marquette-lays-off-24-faculty-and-staff-leaves-50-positions-unfilled/2225523001/) with more planned.

It's kinda weird to be outraged now about a lack of transparency, when letters were sent to the Marquette community more than a year ago about the looming demographic crisis with employee reductions necessary and that was before anyone knew about the additional COVID crisis.

[apl68]

So how will they decide who of the duplicated faculty to let go? Let's say across those 6 campuses you have 12 faculty who teach American Government Systems. Now you only need 5-6 as they can teach larger classes. How do you decide who stays and who goes? It is just luck of geography? Those at the remaining 2 campuses stay put? Or will there be some sort of evaluation of who is the "best" to retain?

I would guess that there will be a lot of negotiation over which campuses get to keep what faculty, with much of the outcome being determined by various political factors.  Political considerations will probably mean that no campuses are shut down entirely.  But some of them may end up seriously downgraded in terms of what level of majors and services they can still offer.

[polly_mer]

The four state colleges in Vermont are still in bad shape: https://vtdigger.org/2020/10/29/vermonts-state-colleges-will-get-through-this-year-but-the-next-year-looks-grim/

For those who don't remember:

https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/2020/04/17/vermont-state-colleges-could-close-three-campuses-chancellor-says/5153004002/

https://vtdigger.org/2019/05/05/college-enrollment-crisis-hitting-vermont-especially-hard/

[polly_mer]

Rider University has adopted a policy of paying bills at about 60 days as a response to cash flow: https://www.theridernews.com/university-revenue-shortages-contribute-to-delay-in-pay-invoices/

For those who don't know, that's a big red financial flag, much worse than making temporary cuts in pay or staffing levels.

[mamselle]

Yeah, I worked A/P (Acct's Payable) at a hospital once that was doing that. We all started looking for other jobs when they went to 90 days out.

Somehow, they pulled it together, though, and they're still operating.

M.

[jonadam]

I sincerely hope a nearby school can absorb Westminster Choir College, the beleaguered conservatory attached to Rider, because Rider University is doing a great job of ensuring that it will no longer exist in about five years.

[polly_mer]

I sincerely hope a nearby school can absorb Westminster Choir College, the beleaguered conservatory attached to Rider, because Rider University is doing a great job of ensuring that it will no longer exist in about five years.

If any nearby institution wanted Westminster Choir College, then Rider would have been able to offload it years ago or even last year when it tried.  Instead, a web search with a quick skim indicates that while Rider's effort last year to sell WCC's campus fell through, WCC has been relocated away from that prime land in Princeton, NJ and onto Rider's main campus.  The lawsuits continue, but it's likely that neither WCC nor Rider will be open in 5 years.

[polly_mer]

"Guilford College, in North Carolina, plans to eliminate 30 percent of its full-time faculty positions and discontinue nearly half its academic majors" per https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2020/11/09/guilford-plans-layoffs-tenured-and-visiting-faculty